Taiwan promotes chip diplomacy as allies old and new mingle at major trade show

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By Ben Blanchard

TAIPEI (Reuters) -As leading global semiconductor companies gathered in Taipei this week for the Semicon trade show to discuss the AI boom, one area got a much more prominent role than before: Taiwan’s use of its dominance of the chip industry to promote diplomatic aims.

Taiwan, home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC, has long been the global industry leader, but it is diplomatically isolated owing to China’s sovereignty claims that prevent most countries forging formal ties with Taipei.

Speaking at a side event on geopolitics that Taiwan’s foreign ministry co-sponsored for the first time at Semicon, Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said semiconductors and AI are “strategic resources”.

“We firmly believe that only by working with Taiwan can the free world create trusted non-red supply chains,” Lin added, referring to efforts to shift supply chains away from China.

Taiwan has been particularly keen to forge closer tech ties with other “like-minded” democracies, especially in central and eastern Europe where the Russian invasion of Ukraine has drawn sympathy for the threat Taiwan says it faces from China.

At a separate Semicon event attended by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, Marek Zenisek, Czech Minister for Science, Research and Innovation said his country and Taiwan share the same values of democracy, freedom and openness.

“These values are under increasing pressure across the board. They are also the reason why our partnership is natural,” said Zenisek, whose country is pitching itself as an ideal supplier for TSMC’s first European factory being built across the border in Germany’s Dresden.

Beyond Taiwan’s traditional though informal supporters in the United States and Europe, Semicon also drew some more unlikely attendees from countries that have long since ditched Taiwan to draw closer to China.

Of the 17 country pavilions at Semicon, the most ever, Costa Rica attended for the first time. In 2007, it became the first country in Central America to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China. Their delegation declined to comment when approached by Reuters.

There was also, for the first time, a delegation from Africa, a continent where China has broad diplomatic and economic influence and Taiwan very little.

The group of 10 African tech entrepreneurs from the French-African Foundation met Lin, on a trip the de facto French embassy in Taiwan helped arrange.

Joelle Itoua Owona, the CEO of AfriWell Health, a medical technology startup active in the Republic of Congo, which has not had relations with Taiwan since 1964, told Reuters that African governments wanted to diversify their partnerships.

Other countries like the United States and France get investment from both Taiwan and China, and Africa should be no different, she added.

“Taiwan is an additional friend” for Africa, Owona said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kim Coghill)